


Valour as a Fire

by amyfortuna



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ghosts, Houseless Elves - Freeform, M/M, Sad, Tearjerker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5116151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a ghost, Fingon follows Maedhros from the Nirnaeth Arnoediad onward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valour as a Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



The pain is blinding. Gothmog's mace strikes my helm, sends my head ringing, my whole body jarring with the force of it. 

I struggle there, trapped within my own body, for a moment that seems timeless, eternal. I am ruined, I am done, every part of me is broken, and yet I hold on an instant too long, suffering and suffering. 

Some thread inside me breaks, then, and I drift, floating. I can see myself - the ruin that is left of me, blue and silver banners bloodstained mingled with the mire and the gore of what was once my body. There are still gold threads in my hair. 

Gothmog still beats with his mace at that broken body, still treads banners into the morass of my blood and bones. "Fool," I laugh at him, soundless. "I am no longer there to suffer you." 

There is a pull inside me, a deep whisper that I know is Námo's call. For a moment I turn my head toward the West, toward what was once home. I have fulfilled my Doom. I have done my best. I could go, and be forgiven, and eventually be reembodied. 

But Maedhros is not that way. I face the East instead, finding myself drifting toward him like metal to a magnet, far removed from this disaster of a battle. My brother still fights, my army - what is left of it - struggles on - but it is lost, all lost, and I only wish now to be found. 

I look down at myself. I am not sure what I was expecting, but I am almost formless, a shadow made of light, nearly invisible even to myself. And yet I look the same. I feel everything just as it was, except that I am no longer weary, or hungry, or in any pain. From the way I feel, I could be back in Barad Eithel six days ago, readying for the fight, save for the fact that I am floating invisibly over a plain full of destruction and death, searching for my beloved.

The look on his face is terrifying when I do see him at last. Somehow he knows of my death. We were miles apart, and yet he felt it or saw it - or just knew it. And he is broken, his spirit a wavering flame, his eyes burning with regret and anger mingled so hard together that I long to go to him and wipe that pain from his face. 

He does not see me. 

The battle, from all sides, ends up as a rout. We are defeated, destroyed beyond recovery. Faint and far a voice, still strong, comes to my ears, borne to me by more than errant breezes. It is a promise. It is the last lingering remnant of hope. " _Aure entuluva!_ " Húrin's voice rings out, again and again, beyond count, beyond measure, and at last falls silent. 

I do not know what I expected. Maedhros' heart has become a stone, weighting him to the fragile earth, hardened against all softer reason. There's no love can get through now, and I cannot reach him, cannot touch him. 

Years go by and I can only watch as he falls. Despair covers him in soundless waves, and he sinks beneath them. Sometimes I fear he loves the fall, embraces it too closely, as if it were his true desire. And sometimes he rises up, fights back, a drowning man endeavouring to swim all the sea that separates him from hope. 

It is pain that sparks him, forces him upward, and that the pain of innocents. Suffering children huddling together in a forest in winter cause lightning to flash through his blood, and he rages in the night, fiery as the Balrog that cut me down, searching for them. 

He finds nothing but the howl of the wolves and the wind, but it rouses him, stirs to life that deadened heart. For a moment, as I stand just outside the circle of the torchlight on the snow, our eyes meet, and almost I think he sees me. His eyes widen, but he makes no sound of surprise. I think he knows that I am with him. 

And yet - and yet - that which pulls him upward also drags him down. Loss leads to fury and fury to despair, and he has no will to fight. I remember Mithrim, when he blazed to life again, beautiful in his wrath, dedicated and constant. His heart was a hearthfire, and now it is ashes, feebly stirring to flicker but never burning bright. 

The Silmaril would set his heart ablaze once more. This is what he feels in the depths of his heart - that holding it would bring relief. That if the Oath they swore was fulfilled, he would feel alive once more. 

In the end, the touch of the Silmaril destroys the fire within him completely. He takes it into his hand, and it _burns_. I am so close by him then that we nearly share a body, and when he makes real and tangible the fall of his heart, I go with him into the heated darkness. His body dies, and I wrap myself around his soul, gathering him to my heart. If the Houseless can weep then I do, and he cries with me, burning tears that hurt us both to feel. 

"Why, Findekáno, why?" is the question that rings throughout all of his being. _Why are you here, why did you stay, why did any of this have to happen?_

I smile sadly. We drift in dark emptiness, alone and together. Time is no longer a concept that applies to us, and in the deep night we are the one light, flames forever mingled.


End file.
